Do You Believe in Ghosts?
© By Janice Bumbalough Marler
NOTE: I have changed the names
2,921 word count
I have heard ghost stories from the time I was a young girl. When we had sleep-over’s we would take the flashlight, hide under the covers, and spin tall tails about ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’. It would cause us to have nightmares. (I wonder if that man ever found his golden arm).
As a young woman I often had company, and someone would begin talking about ghosts. I wasn’t certain that I believed in ghosts. There had been no ghost happenings until I was in my thirties. I’m here to tell you that they do exist, because I have encountered several along my life’s journey.
The Bible tells us we do not war with flesh and blood, but with spiritual beings. God himself is a spirit. We have the Holy Spirit that hears our prayers and takes them back to God. The Bible speaks about ghosts not having bodies, or of people in the Bible ‘giving up the ghost’.
Let me tell you a true story. Several years ago, I married a man from Augusta, Georgia. My daughter, me, and Kevin’s ten year old son, moved in with Kevin’s landlady Ms. Roberts. It wasn’t long after we moved in that we experienced our first phenomenon. There were no logical explanations. It defied logic.
It was around the first part of September, nineteen-seventy nine, we had been sitting on the patio; it was a hot and humid fall night. SPLAT! SPLAT! We were slapping pesky mosquito’s right and left that had been feeding off of our bodies. The humidity was getting to us, and the night air was not yielding a fan to keep up cool. We moved back inside around the dining-room table for iced-tea. The five-room, red-brick ranch house was cooled by central air. It felt good to be out of the reach of the blood sucking insects.
Kelly and I were excited to be moving to Augusta, because neither one of us had been to Georgia.
Ms. Roberts was a feisty, petite woman, who’s only vice seemed to be chain smoking. She was sixty-seven years young. We were taken in by her demeanor. She appeared, in every sense of the word, to be a sweet, gentle, loving grandmother.
Kevin had been renting from her for several months before we married. She seemed to love him as much as she did her own son, or so I thought. She had her secrets and it wouldn’t be long before we found out what they were. Let’s just say, they were of the darker side.
Ms. Robert’s house sat approximately two-hundred feet from the street. As you pulled into the driveway, on either side, sitting closer to the street was two more brick ranch houses. Around a hundred and fifty feet behind the house, to our right, and approximately one hundred and twenty-five feet or so, from Ms. Robert’s property, sat a single-wide trailer.
I tell you this so you will understand exactly why the loud noise we heard, in the rear of the house, could not have come from anywhere else. It was too close.
'THUD!’ It was a thunderous, earsplitting sound. It sounded as if something huge had fallen in back of the house. The sound reminded me of a large fuel container, the kind of container that houses oil to heat with. Ms. Robert’s furnace was electric. In fact, everything was electric.
Kevin and I immediately began searching the perimeter of the house but couldn’t locate anything that would have created the deafening noise.
Kevin told Ms.Roberts that we had looked everywhere and couldn’t find anything that had fallen over, or the source of the noise. All of us were dumbfounded. We excused ourselves and went to bed.
"It couldn’t have been our imaginations because all of us heard it. At that I kissed Kevin goodnight and went to sleep pondering in my mind the strange happening.
This past summer, while visiting her sister in Maryland, Kelly met a young, twenty-one year old enlisted man, Wesley Loggens. My second daughter, Anne, had married a marine who was stationed at Fort Meade. The young man was too old for Kelly, but I knew if I protested too much what she would do. She was in ‘love’. Nothing lasts forever.
They wrote each other faithfully and he was constantly calling her. Our phone bill was over two-hundred dollars. There was no way we could afford to pay those kinds of long-distance charges. Kelly had no concept of money or a budget. I believe she thought the green foliage on our trees was not green foliage at all, but money.
Kelly needed stamps and decided to walk to a small convenient store located not far from the house. Ben went with her because I didn’t want her walking alone at night. When she got back she put her stamps on the table then went to the refrigerator to pour herself some more iced-tea. When she got back to the table her stamps were missing. She was hot and began accusing Ben of taking her stamps. “I didn’t take your dumb stamps!” “Yes you did. Admit it!” They were screaming at each other. Then she began accusing everyone of taking them. “Kelly! That’s enough! No one took your stamps! Look in your room. You might have put them in there thinking you put them on the table.” “I didn’t. I put them right here.” She was pointing to the table in front of her chair. She stormed off to her room slamming the door behind her.
When Kelly came back she had her stamps in her hand with the strangest look on her face. “Mom, I found them in my trash can.” “How in the world did they get in there?” “I don’t know. I looked on my dresser and my nightstand. When I looked down at the trash can I saw them laying on the top. You know I wouldn’t have thrown them in there.” “Well Kelly no one left this table and you know it. You were in the dining-room with us.”
First the loud noise outside and now this. It was becoming more perplexed.
On the way to bed Kevin asked me, “What do you think happened to Kelly’ stamps?” I shrugged my shoulders and told him I didn’t know what to think.
Ms. Roberts had relatives living in Idaho she wanted to visit. The only television in the house was in her bedroom. After she left, Kevin and I laid on her bed watching the TV. Kevin fell asleep. All of a sudden the bedroom lamp, by the bed, came on by itself. I shook Kevin but not before he had seen it too. “Did you see that?” “Yep! Let’s get out of here.” We high-tailed it back to our own bedroom.
I called our minister and asked him if he knew anything about lamps. He agreed to look at it.
When I took the lamp to our him, I told him what it had done. I asked him if he believed in ghosts and he told me he didn't. A week later he brought the lamp back to us and said he couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
When it happened again I contacted a Catholic priest. (They're good at this sort of thing). I am not catholic. He agreed to come to the house and pray over it. He told us that the house had been built over grounds that the Civil Wars had been fought on. Fort Gordon wasn’t too far from where we lived.
That’s when he told me the story of the Exorcist was based on a true story. He told me he couldn’t exorcise the house unless he had permission from higher up and that was difficult to get. The priest sprinkled holy water in each room. Later Kelly asked me what the priest was doing and I explained it to her the best way I could. Kelly had no idea what holy water was.
Kelly and Ben had radios in their rooms. They liked to go to sleep to music. Kevin noticed every time he went to cover Ben up, the radios volume would escalate, but when he left the room the volume would return to its normal level. The same thing happened in Kelly’s room. Kevin came into the kitchen to get me. He wanted me to hear it too so he wouldn’t think it was his imagination. I heard it, and it vexed both of us.
“Mom! Ben keeps turning my radio station!” “Ben. Come here. Did you touch Kelly’s radio? She said you were changing the channels.” “I didn’t touch her dumb radio.” Kelly wasn’t satisfied with his answer but accepted it as much as a teenage step-sister could.
There were cold spots in their rooms. One side would be warm and the other cold.
Whatever it was, that had taken up residency in the house, began locking me outside. At first I thought I had accidentally locked the door. I had to wait until Ben got home from school so I could put him through the kitchen window to unlock the door. It happened so much so that I began carrying a key with me. I was much smarter that that apparition; he or she didn’t know me very well.
It would turn my iron off, turn the burners on the stove to high, give Kevin wedgies, (he thought it was us), slam doors, ring the doorbell, along with a maraud of other effects. By the way, all the doors were open, not one door was shut.
During one of Wesley’s leave, he asked us if he could visit. He had some leave time and wanted to see Kelly. Kevin and I talked it over and reluctantly agreed. I knew Kelly. If I fought her too hard on this she would bolt and I might never see her again. What does a twenty-one year old enlisted man see in a seventeen year old girl anyhow? Wesley wasn’t at all what I expected. He stood approximately five feet five or six. The marines had buffed him up and he was somewhat handsome with his crew cut and blue eyes. Everything was, “Yes ma′am” or “no ma′am.” I wasn’t used to that kind of formality.
One evening, shortly after Wesley’s arrival, Ben came to me, "Wesley has drugs in his duffel bag. “Ben! You know better than to go into someone’s personal affects and nose around.” “But I thought you would want to know about this. I’m afraid Kelly is getting into something over her head.” “Thanks for letting me know. You go along. I’ll handle this. Don’t say anything to Kelly about what you found. O.k.?” Apparently the ghost didn’t like Wesley either. It would lock him out of the house too.
The house was unusually hot. Kevin went to the thermostat to see how cool the temperature setting was. It was set to high heat. Kevin adjusted the temperature and came back to the table. “Someone cut the heat up as high as it would go.” (In the south they say ‘cut’ for turning on or off). Collectively we all told him we didn’t do it.
While we were having dinner we heard another door slam. It shut so hard that the Tub and Tile cleaner I had been using fell into the bathtub. There was no wind in the house because all of the windows were shut. Not one door was closed. It scared the beegeebies out of everyone. (That's also a southern expression).
Wesley had, had enough of the ghost and enough of us. We had too many rules for Kelly. He and I got into an argument and I told him he had to leave. Kevin took him to the bus station the following morning. Kelly was totally out of control; I called her father from another state to come and get her. I didn’t think she would ever forgive me. But time is a great healer.
After Kelly went to live with her father, I heard a man’s voice. It wasn’t a loud voice, and it wasn’t the voice of anyone young, or old. It sounded like someone in their late thirties or early forties. “Kelly will never marry Wesley.” That was all he said. In the end Kelly didn’t marry Wesley. Her father said as long as she lived with him she would have no contact whatsoever with Wesley. He kept his word.
My parents decided they wanted to see Augusta. They planned their visit around the last of October when the leaves had turned.
I was busy cleaning house, and preparing the shopping list when I heard a loud noise coming from Ms. Robert’s room. Everything in the top of her closet had been thrown onto the floor. It was as if someone took their long arms and swept them off the shelf. “If you’re going to make this mess, you need to help clean it up!” I screamed at the entity. What a mess. I told my parents about the happenings in the house. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Daddy told me. “Then you need to come over here and spend a few weeks. You’ll see.” He laughed at me; I know he thought I was nuts. If I was crazy, then everyone in the house was crazy too. Not one thing happened out of the ordinary during their visit. Wouldn’t you know it.
“Jan′niece. Where are you?” It was Peggy, or so I thought, calling for me. Peggy had a deep southern draw. Her voice was unmistakable.
“I’m in the bathroom putting color on my hair. Come on in. I’ll be out in a little while.” “Jan′niece! Where are you?” “Peggy I’m in the bathroom. Come on in.”
I threw a towel around my head and went into the kitchen. The door from the patio leads into the kitchen. Peggy was driving up the driveway. She wasn’t anywhere near the house. I told her what had just happened. She had a funny look on her face. She didn’t know what to think; that is, until Jenny showed up.
We were sitting around the kitchen table discussing the ghost when Jenny knocked on the door. “Come in.” “The door's locked. I can’t.” “Peggy did you lock the door?” “No. Did you?” The ghost had done it again.
Peggy’s sixteen month old was sitting on a chair at the end of the table. When he tried to get down it was as if something was holding him firm to the chair. He was on his belly and was going to crawl down from the front. He couldn’t. He tried climbing down from the right, and then from the left. He still couldn’t get down. His mother finally picked him up and placed him on the floor. Johnny cried and cried. He tried crawling, but the ghost wouldn’t let him. By this time he's screaming at the top of his lungs. “I guess I had better go.” Just as she was about to leave a large serving platter flew off the top of our refrigerator landing not far from her feet. Jenny had already gone and wasn’t a witness to any of this.
A week later, Jenny came by to see if I would sit with her two small daughters while she gave piano lessons. I told her I would. On Friday she brought Bonnie, and Cyndi, ages 4 and 3, to me.
After she left, the two girls were busy playing in the sand about twenty-five feet away from the patio. I heard the doorbell. I thought one of them may have been locked out. When I went to the door, no one was there. Bonnie and Cyndi were still playing in the sand.
The doorbell rang two or three times more. By the time Kevin got home from work I was exhausted. He picked Cyndi up in his strong arms to play with her. The doorbell rang; he went to the door, and again no one was there. I wish you could have seen his face. He came back into the kitchen to tell me about the doorbell when it rang again. “Aren’t you going to answer it?” “No!” I told him how the doorbell rang while the children were playing in the sand. We decided not to tell Jenny. They might think we were crazy.
Remember when I said earlier that Ms. Roberts’ had a dark side? After she left for Idaho, her mail was picked up by Ben at the mailbox. She had been subscribing to magazines that dealt with satanic potions, rituals, and hexes. She had secretly been casting spells. No wonder the house was full of weird happenings.
I left Augusta, Georgia and all of its bazaar episodes but I never forgot what I had seen and heard there. I am forever a believer.